Richard Holbrooke, the man who ended Bosnia bloodshed, dies aged 69

Richard Holbrooke, the architect of the 1995 Bosnia peace plan and President Barack Obama's special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, has died. He was 69.

Calling Mr Holbrooke "a true giant of American foreign policy", Mr Obama said the diplomat was "a truly unique figure who will be remembered for his tireless diplomacy, love of country and pursuit of peace".

He deserves credit for much of the progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the president said.

Mr Holbrooke, whose forceful style earned him the nicknames "The Bulldozer" and "Raging Bull," was admitted to a Washington hospital on Friday with heart problems.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said he had "served the country he loved for nearly half a century, representing the US in far-flung war zones and high-level peace talks, always with distinctive brilliance and unmatched determination".

He served under every Democratic president from John F Kennedy to Mr Obama. Born in New York City on April 24, 1941, Mr Holbrooke was aide to two US ambassadors in Saigon during the Vietnam war.

He wrote a volume of the Pentagon Papers, a government study of involvement in Vietnam that said the reason for the war was based far more on preserving US prestige than preventing communism or helping the Vietnamese.

After stints in and out of government, including in finance and magazine journalism, he became ambassador to Germany when Bill Clinton took the White House in 1993. He brokered the Dayton peace accord which ended the war in Bosnia. Serb leader Radovan Karadzic told a war crimes tribunal last year that Mr Holbrooke had promised him immunity in return for leaving politics. He denied it.

In 1998, he negotiated with Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw his forces from Kosovo where they were accused of ethnic cleansing.

On his role as Mr Obama's special envoy, he wrote in March 2008 that "the conflict in Afghanistan will be far more costly and much, much longer than Americans realise. This war, already in its seventh year, will eventually become the longest in American history, surpassing even Vietnam."